Over the past several years, smartphones and other Internet-enabled devices have become useful for a variety of purposes beyond the original telephony and simple data transfer tasks for which these devices originally were designed. It is not uncommon to see a smartphone user checking prices at a grocery store, sending emails while waiting in line, watching videos while riding a train or bus, or otherwise engaging in advanced communication tasks using smartphones.
Notwithstanding the increasingly commonplace use of smartphones, there are some aspects of smartphones and/or smartphone data connectivity that may frustrate the adoption and/or use of some smartphone functionality by some users. For example, there may be a perception that smartphones can increase the risk of certain types of fraud, for example when transferring payment information and/or other personal information over electronic channels.
In an attempt to address some of these real and/or perceived vulnerabilities, various technologies have been developed for making secure payments using smartphones or other electronic devices. Some of these technologies, for example near field communication (“NFC”), can rely upon extremely short range wireless technologies to decrease the risk of interception of the information. Users who wish to pay using these technologies generally must bring an electronic device within 6-8 cm of a payment system, which may preclude interception of any wireless signals associated with the payment operation.
While multiple users of smartphones may sometimes be located in a single geographic location, there may be no way to recognize the colocation of these devices and/or to take advantage of that colocation. Furthermore, there are times at which verbal communication can be less accurate and/or less reliable than electronic communications. Thus, while there may be a risk in using smartphones or other devices to complete electronic transactions, the risks of completing these transactions via other approaches (e.g., verbal communication, swiping credit cards, or the like), may exceed the risks of using smartphones.